Community voice, alongside academic voice, is essential to the core community engagement principle of reciprocity—the seeking, recognizing, respecting, and incorporating the knowledge, perspectives, and resources that each partner brings to a collaboration. Increasing the extent to which academic conferences honor reciprocity with community members is important for many reasons. For example, community perspectives often enhance knowledge generation and potentially transform scholarship, practice, and outcomes for all stakeholders. However, community presence and participation at academic
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Emily Janke
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
There are strong arguments for and against having either a dedicated funding scheme for science communication in the next European Framework Programme, or mainstreaming upstream engagement across all disciplines. How could both approaches be combined? The success of either will depend on its operationalisation.
We argue that the commitment to science-society integration and Responsible Research and Innovation in past European framework programmes has already made considerable progress in better aligning research and innovation with European societies. The framework programmes have important socialisation effects and recent research point to positive trends across key areas of Responsible Research and Innovation within academic organisations. What appears to be a step away from the concerted efforts to facilitate European citizens’ meaningful contribution to research and innovation in the upcoming
Modern science communication has emerged as a field of study, a body of practice and a profession. In the last 60 years, we have seen the birth of interactive science centres, university courses, the first research into science communication, and a growth in employment by research institutions, universities, museums, science centres and industry. Now Ireland has told its story.
Public trust in agricultural biotechnology organizations that produce so-called ‘genetically-modified organisms’ (GMOs) is affected by misinformed attacks on GM technology and worry that producers' concern for profits overrides concern for the public good. In an experiment, we found that reporting that the industry engages in open and transparent research practices increased the perceived trustworthiness of university and corporate organizations involved with GMOs. Universities were considered more trustworthy than corporations overall, supporting prior findings in other technology domains
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Asheley LandrumJoseph HilgardRobert LullHeather AkinKathleen Hall Jamieson
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
We present an assessment of the Engage program, a graduate-student-created and led training program at the University of Washington. Using a pre-course/post-course study design, we examined student ability to deliver a short presentation appropriate for a public audience. Based on both self-assessments and assessments by external reviewers, we show that Engage trainees had an increase in their ability to employ effective communication techniques.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Melissa ClarksonJuliana HoughtonWilliam ChenJessica Rodhe
The goals of this proposal are: 1) to provide opportunities for underrepresented students to consider careers in basic or clinical research by exciting them through an educational Citizen Science research project; 2) to provide teachers with professional development in science content and teaching skills using research projects as the infrastructure; and 3) to improve the environments and behaviors in early childcare and education settings related to healthy lifestyles across the state through HSTA students Citizen Science projects. The project will complement or enhance the training of a workforce to meet the nation’s biomedical, behavioral and clinical research needs. It will encourage interactive partnerships between biomedical and clinical researchers,in-service teachers and early childcare and education facilities to prevent obesity.
Specific Aim I is the Biomedical Summer Institute for Teachers led by university faculty. This component is a one week university based component. The focus is to enhance teacher knowledge of biomedical characteristics and problems associated with childhood obesity, simple statistics, ethics and HIPAA compliance, and the principles of Citizen Science using Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR). The teachers, together with the university faculty and staff, will develop the curriculum and activities for Specific Aim II.
Specific Aim II is the Biomedical Summer Institute for Students, led by HSTA teachers guided by university faculty. This experience will expose 11th grade HSTA students to the biomedical characteristics and problems associated with obesity with a focus on early childhood. Students will be trained on Key 2 a Healthy Start, which aims to improve nutrition and physical activity best practices, policies and environments in West Virginia’s early child care and education programs. The students will develop a meaningful project related to childhood obesity and an aspect of its prevention so that the summer institute bridges seamlessly into Specific Aim III.
Specific Aim III is the Community Based After School Club Experiences. The students and teachers from the summer experience will lead additional interested 9th–12th grade students in their clubs to examine their communities and to engage community members in conducting public health intervention research in topics surrounding childhood obesity prevention through Citizen Science. Students and teachers will work collaboratively with the Key 2 a Healthy Start team on community projects that will be focused on providing on-going technical assistance that will ultimately move the early childcare settings towards achieving best practices related to nutrition and physical activity in young children.
In November 2016, within an Environmental studies course at the University of Venice, students carried out an experiment aimed at collecting scenarios of the Venetian coast's future starting from lessons learnt during the episode of storm surge 50 years ago (Aqua Granda ‘flood’). The students built scenarios able to anticipate the effect of sea level rise on coastal areas in Venice, based not only on scientific input but also on a methodology called “Futurescape city Tours” (FCT) involving inhabitants of the barrier islands of Lido and Pellestrina. This paper will explore three main questions
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TEAM MEMBERS:
ALBA L'ASTORINAAlessia GhezziStefano GuerzoniEmanuela Molinaroli
Field stations across the United States provide learning opportunities to the general public through their outreach programming. With approximately 78% and 98% of the US population living within 60 and 120 miles of a field station, respectively, stations have the potential to be key providers of informal STEM education. We surveyed a sample of US biological field stations and asked them to describe their outreach programming and goals. Our findings indicate that field stations prioritize outreach by dedicating personnel and fiscal resources, but such initiatives are highly variable in
This study was designed to explore the chemistry outreach practices of college students associated with the American Chemical Society (ACS) and Alpha Chi Sigma (ΑΧΣ). Students affiliated with these organizations are heavily involved with the chemistry-specific informal science education practice of chemistry outreach. Despite reporting that they reach almost 1 million people every year through outreach, little is known about their outreach practices. Two investigations were conducted to address the gap in understanding of college students conducting outreach. The first investigation involved
College students associated with the American Chemical Society and Alpha Chi Sigma student/collegiate chapters reach almost 1 million people every year through their informal chemistry education events (chemistry outreach). Previous work has characterized their goals for chemistry outreach, with the most prevalent goal being audience learning. With such large audiences being impacted every year and the goal of audience learning, investigating how these college students approach teaching in informal environments is needed to further understand chemistry outreach practices. This paper presents
Informal chemistry education/chemistry outreach is ubiquitous with the chemical enterprise. However, little research has focused on the planning, implementation, or evaluation of these events. Results from a previous study suggest that college students involved with collegiate chapters of the American Chemical Society and Alpha Chi Sigma are heavily involved with chemistry outreach, and their most frequently discussed purpose is to teach chemistry content to their audiences. Given this goal, it is timely to investigate how well these college students, who are acting as teachers in outreach